Waxwork II: Lost in Time (1992)

WARNING: I’m going to give away major details about the movie including how it ends.  You’ve been warned.



The first Waxworks wasn’t particularly impressive.  I could forgive you for not having heard of it.  It was about some friends, most of whom fall victim to an evil wax museum.  Sarah and Mark escape, only to be followed by a reanimated hand in the final scene.  Waxwork II starts with a montage of scenes recounting those events.  We see the wax museum burn down, many characters die horrible deaths and so on.

The movie starts with Mark dropping Sarah off at her place.  Her place happens to be her stepfather’s apartment.  He’s abusive, and very much in the stereotypical way.  He wears the famous undershirt and drinks beer.  (How do we know it’s beer?  It’s in a white can with the word “BEER” on it.)   Sarah’s stepfather begins yelling at her and whatnot when the reanimated hand shows up and kills him.  Mark is able to save her, but Sarah is still left to take the fall for Stepfather’s death.

The trial goes about as well as Sarah has a right to expect. No one believes her story about the zombie hand.  After all, Mark is the only person that could back her up.  I’m not really sure why her attorney doesn’t go for an insanity or self-defense plea.  After all, Sarah’s stepfather was about to hit her.  I know that affirmative defenses can be problematic, but I think this might be an appropriate time to try.

After the trial lets out, Mark and Sarah go looking for something that can help her.  They find a magic compass-looking thing that allows them to travel to an alternate dimension.  They pass through worlds, much like in the first movie.  Each one is an homage to a different movie classic.  Their first stop is Frankenstein.  From there, they end up in other movies, like Alien ad The Haunting.

Sir Wilfred shows up in the form of a raven to provide a little help.  Well, he basically shows up to explain what’s going on.  This alternate dimension is a playground between God and Satan.  They can’t battle it out on our plane directly, but they can fight it out here.  Sir Wilfred calls it God’s Nintendo.  What happens in God’s Nintendo has effects in the real world.  Each side has time warriors that help out.

Mark is able to get Sarah the help she needs before sending her back.  He stays behind to be a time warrior, himself.  The important thing is that Sarah has a reanimated hand to offer as evidence of her story.  She is, of course, promptly acquitted.  As she exit’s the courthouse, a cab pulls up.  A man gets out and hands Sarah her very own compass thing.  She drives off with the implication being that she goes to rejoin Mark.

Ok.  So, there are several issues.  First off, no mention is made of the house burning down with nearly everyone in it.  Most of the main characters from the movie also went missing.  You’d think Mark and/or Sarah would be on the hook for at least some of that.  Nope.  Not even an arson charge.  (I think the deaths might be felony homicide depending on where they live and who’s prosecuting.)

Another issue is how the hand managed to kill Sarah’s stepfather, being that it’s just a hand.  How does something that small manage to pin someone down and strangle them?  The movie seems to have little use for physics.  (I know the man is drunk, but still…)

Zach Galligan and Patrick Macnee are the only two actors to appear in both the first and second movies.  (Deborah Foreman was replaced with Monika Schnarre as Sarah.)  We do get to see Bruce Campbell and David Carradine make appearances.  And wait… is that Marina Sirtis?  Wow!  Deanna Troi appears in this film.  (Well, not as Deanna Troi, but still…)

Like the first movie, this one wasn’t great.  It was entertaining the first time, but I don’t think I would buy it.  It’s the kind of movie that a local station might play because the studio wasn’t asking a lot of money for it.  This movie could easily have not been made and I don’t think anyone would have noticed.

IMDb page

The Twilight Zone (1959) -- Season 1 Episode 10 (Judgment Night)

The Twilight Zone was known for eerie, ironic twists.  One had a world where the concept of beauty is different and what we consider normal is ugly.  Some would get their wish, only to find that they should have been more careful what they asked for.  The series, like many others, was a little uneven in the first season.  There were some hits, like Time Enough at Last.  However, Judgment Night may go down as one of the outliers.

This isn’t to say it’s bad.  It’s just that it doesn’t quite fit in with other episodes in my mind.  It starts with a man, one Carl Lanser, on the deck of a boat.  It’s crossing the Atlantic ocean from Britain to America.  It had an escort, which it seems to have lost.  Thus, they have to be wary of German U-boats.  Lanser can’t remember details of his life beyond name and city of birth, but he assures his fellow passengers that a pack of U-boats wouldn’t waste their time with a single ship.  They’d likely be attacked by one submarine.

Lanser becomes more and more paranoid as the night goes on.  He becomes insistent that they will, in fact, be attacked at 1:15 a.m. by the Germans.  When the time comes, they are attacked.  Lanser looks at the U-boat to see himself.  The ship is sunk with all hands, including Lanser, killed.  On the U-Boat, Captain Lanser talks with a lieutenant.  The lieutenant is wrought with guilt, but the captain assures him that this is war and all is fair.  The episode ends with Lanser standing on the deck of the ship, as at the beginning of the episode.  His hell is to live the fate of his victims, presumably for eternity.

I’m not sure if Serling was trying to make a point with this.  An unrepentant Nazi captain does seem deserving of punishment, but what’s the point of punishing him if he can’t remember?  Each time he appears on the boat, Lanser seems to start anew.  It would seem much more hellish if Lanser had the repetition to look forward to.

There is a moral, of sorts, in that we all get our due in the end.  Hell doesn’t have to be fire and brimstone.  It can be having to live through the hell you inflicted on someone else.  This does present a problem in that you can’t really build any sort of real empathy for Lanser, as he’s essentially getting the punishment he deserves.  I’m not sure if I can feel sympathy for the crew and other passengers of the ship, as I’m not sure if they’re real or not.

This may be why I don’t recall seeing this one on a lot of marathons.  It’s a good episode, but doesn’t really fit well with other episodes.  Even other episodes in the first part of the first season are more in line with what I’d expect.  If you can get the entire series streaming, such as with Netflix, I’d recommend watching it.  I’m just not sure I’d put it on any best-of lists.

IMDb page